Regina Magna
by Shu of the Wind
Summary: Or, the Great Queen. It's August 1892, a year after the Zodiac Case, and Elizabeth and Ciel are still hanging on tenterhooks. But when Ran Mao crashes in through Lizzy's window one night to tell her Lau has been kidnapped, things get a whole lot messier. Ave atque vale. LizzyCiel. Sequel to Domina Esques.


**Title:** Regina Magna.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> T/T+.

**Summary:** Or, the Great Queen. It's August 1892, a year after the Zodiac Case, and Elizabeth and Ciel are still hanging on tenterhooks. But when Ran Mao crashes in through Lizzy's window one night to tell her Lau has been kidnapped, things get a whole lot messier. Ave atque vale. LizzyCiel. Sequel to Domina Esques.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Kuroshitsuji._ The manga belongs to Toboso Yana, the anime to…I forget. But it's not mine. Any of the OCs you don't recognize, though, ARE mine, and this includes Felicity and Theodore Parker, Rebecca Beddor, Stephen, Nathaniel, and Caroline Fotheringhay, Colleen Murray, and others. Applies to all chapters.

**NOTE:** If you haven't read _Domina Esques_, I highly suggest you go and read that first. If you don't, there will be a great many things about this story that will not only spoil _DE_, but confuse you greatly, including but not limited to: Lizzy's personality, level of knowledge, and possession of the Sheer Badassery Card; Ciel's newfound maturity; my OCs; the behavior of Ronald Knox; any mention of Theo Parker and the Zodiac; and, most of all, Lau's treasure box.

If you _have _read _Domina Esques_, feel free to continue on unimpeded.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One:<br>His Partner, Off-Guard**

Lizzy felt the bullet crease her ear, and swore.

At seven AM on a Sunday, it stood to reason that Covent Garden would be quiet. Obviously, though, it wasn't. It might not have been packed, like it was on a normal day, but there were most certainly people here. Flower girls and orange sellers, who had been setting up their stalls before the pistols had started shouting; beggars; street urchins; pickpockets; tradesmen with their heavy boxes. They'd all run screaming for cover, and now Lizzy had the possibility of civilian casualties on her hands.

Her ear throbbed. Blood trickled down her throat. Lizzy pressed her back against the stack of heavy boxes—they smelled like flour, or dust—and weighed her options. No sword—she'd left that at home, because beggar boys didn't carry swords. A pistol, out of bullets. A viper, wrapped tight around her left arm, but what good could Emily do against seven, no matter how venomous? At least her hat was still perched on her head. If it fell off and revealed her hair now, she had no idea what she would do.

Granted, she _was _surrounded. If they didn't know who she was, she'd eat her cap.

Lizzy crammed her cap tighter onto her head. Her legs were burning. She'd been sprinting since Leicester Square, and she'd already slipped and fallen twice before she'd managed to fling herself behind this stack of boxes and wait for her doom. She heaved for breath, and set a hand at the base of her throat. _Think. Think! _Seven pursuers, four armed. One of them she'd at least managed to clip, she thought, because there was a steady stream of cursewords from the other side of her crates, and one set of footsteps wasn't nearly so steady as the others. Other than that, though, they were armed and ready, and she was bleeding and exhausted and bulletless.

Well, that settled it, then. Ciel was going to kill her.

A second revolver went off. Lizzy bit her tongue hard—Emily had squeezed her arm, painfully tight—and shrank down beneath the crates. There was a gap between the planks, and through it she could see the ringleader, a revolver held high above his head. He'd shot directly into the air. There was an awful set of scratches down his cheek. Lizzy wiped the blood from her fingernails, and looked over her shoulder again. The south exit was twenty feet and a million kilometers away.

"I know you're in here," he said, and lowered his gun slowly. "D'you hear me, you stupid bitch? _I know you're in here_!" Spit flew from his lips, mixed with blood from where she'd bitten him. Her mouth still tasted like his sour gin. Raph Harbottle had been so very unhappy to find that the boy he thought he'd been kissing was a girl, and the girl had teeth and nails to go with her acid tongue. _Think_, she told herself. _Think._ "Y'can't hide from me!"

Down at one end of the courtyard was the Punch and Judy stall. She could see one of the puppeteers cowering behind the curtains. He looked ready to run. His eyes met hers across the courtyard, and she jerked her hand across her throat, shaking her head. She thought she heard him whimper. Then another shot ran out, and Lizzy squealed in spite of herself as wood splintered near her shoulder. Her ear was throbbing. Blood pooled in the hollow of her throat.

"_I'll teach y't'steal from me, you stupid whore_!"

_So polite_. She peeped over the top of the box again. The men had spread out. Lizzy drew a breath, let it out, and crept closer to the edge of the box stack. Three steps. Two. In her sleeve, Emily hissed. There was a man on the other side of her stack of flour crates, whip-thin and stubbled. She hadn't seen him before last night, when he'd dragged her kicking and screaming into the whorehouse on Talbot Street. _Naughty boy, asking so many questions about the Angel Raphael_, he'd hissed in her ear, and she'd kicked him so hard in the crook of the legs that he'd nearly fainted.

"I don't like angels," she'd told him, just before the other three had come down on her head.

He came around the edge of her crates, and Lizzy sprung. She seized the man by the collar of his jacket and had him on the cobblestones before he could suck in a breath. In the next instant, his revolver was in her hand—left hand, her right was still acting funny—and she'd fired. Raph howled as the bullet found its mark, just above his kneecap, and as his men turned to flank him, Lizzy fired again, and again.

She was out and in the swell of humanity that was London before any of them had stirred more than a few feet across the cobblestones.

She was nearly in Russell Square, near the British Museum, before she could finally bring herself to stop. She'd left the stolen revolver in a rubbish heap six blocks from the marketplace, and stolen a cloak off of a washing line two blocks after that. Now, she pulled the hood up over her head and settled on the steps beneath the right-hand lion, tucking her feet up neatly under her. It was still too early for policemen to come to hurry her along, thankfully—even bobbies had to sleep sometimes—so she settled in. Humidity clung to her skin like ashes. She took a few breathless gulps of air, nearly threw up, and then leaned back against the stone to examine her prize.

She still wasn't quite sure as to how the Queen had come to hear about a petty information peddler and human trafficker at the docks. To be frank, Lizzy wasn't really sure how Victoria came by half of the information she seemed to possess. She suspected John Brown, in all honesty—anyone that quiet had to be up to no good. The fact remained, however, that Raphael Harbottle, also known as the Angel Raphael, paedophile, sodomite, and all-around boor, had been the London end of a chain that stretched across Europe to funnel desperate young women—and men, for that matter—into London, into addiction, and into sexual slavery.

"My dear," Victoria had said, when Lizzy had risen from her deep curtsy, "I _would _give this to one of my butlers, but they're all off on other assignments. As you seem to have a particular…" she'd groped for a word. "A powerful vendetta against these sorts of men, I rather thought you would be the best suited to carry out an investigation for me."

Her task had been simple. Proof that Raph Harbottle was less innocent than he appeared to be. If possible, to find an identity for some of his backers. And here they were: papers and photographs, all tied up in twine. Ships and suppliers. Monetary transactions. A booklet of pornographic images that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Lizzy made a mental note to _not _show that one to Victoria. She'd done her job.

Now she just had to wait.

As it turned out, she only had to go over the papers for twenty minutes before a low whistle caught her attention, and Phipps flicked his fingers at her. He walked past, turning the corner. Lizzy waited thirty seconds before standing, brushing the dust off her backside, and following him to a carriage parked at the end of the lane. She clambered into it without assistance. Grey, thank God, was nowhere in sight. Usually Phipps went nowhere without Grey, but once she and Grey had had a knock-down drag-out saber match in the fencing hall at Buckingham Palace, and Grey had lost, he had refused to be in the same room as her. That left Phipps.

Lizzy didn't mind. Phipps was much more tolerable than Grey was. At the very least, he didn't make her want to punch him in the nose every other word.

"You all right, Lady Middleford?" Phipps touched a fingertip to the space beneath his own ear, as if in sympathy. "Looks nasty."

"Only a scrape." She handed over the papers. Charles Phipps only gave them a perfunctory glance before setting them on the carriage seat next to him, and nodding. In her sleeve, Emily shifted, and loosened her grip, just slightly. Snake had set Emily on her nearly three weeks ago, and to this day Lizzy wasn't quite certain as to why. At least it meant that anyone who tried to stick his hands inside her clothes would get one nasty surprise. "Harbottle's wounded. He may try some of the local hospitals, if he's stupid enough."

Emily brushed her nose against Lizzy's jugular, and without thinking about it, Lizzy put her fingers up for the snake to nudge. Phipps' eyes dropped to her throat, and then he met her gaze again.

"Thanks for this," he said, and patted the papers. "We'll be able to get him, now."

Lizzy nodded. "How is she?"

Phipps' mouth thinned. He tapped the top of the carriage with the pommel of his sword, and with a rattle, the cab started to move. "You know I have to say I don't know who you're talking about."

"And you know that I _know _you're keeping her. You and Grey." She clenched her hands into fists on her thighs, and realized with a sting that one of her knuckles was split. "We always have this argument, and you always end up telling me, so just—please tell me if she's doing better. Please?"

Phipps looked at her for an impenetrable moment. Then he sighed. "She hasn't tried to slit her wrists for six months. It's…She's improving. Slowly."

She nodded, and stroked Emily's back. The viper curled tighter around her throat. "Is she still having nightmares?"

Phipps lifted one shoulder in a shrug that could have meant anything. Lizzy bit her tongue. It had been a stupid question anyway. Of course Felicity was having nightmares. She'd been corrupted by the blood of a fallen angel; she'd killed her own father, watched her brother die. Of course she would still be having nightmares.

"If she is," Phipps said suddenly, "she's said nothing about them to me. I'm her captor, not her friend."

He turned his face to the window. Lizzy, studying his profile, wondered: _Are you, though? Are you really? _Then she cleared her throat. "I know you can't take written messages to her," she said, "but—but if you see her, and she seems…able to handle it, can you tell her I said hello?"

Phipps glanced at her again, his eyes darting from her dirty face to her bloody throat to the snake in the collar of her shirt. Then he nodded. They rode in silence for a while, through the city towards Fleet Street, where Paula, Michael, and a change of clothes awaited her. Eventually, Phipps cleared his throat.

"Phantomhive's on his way back from Durham."

She snapped to attention. Lizzy searched his face—for the life of her, she'd never been able to read either of the Double Charles—and then she nodded, once. "I know," she said. "Snake sent me a message. He said it ended well."

"As well as it could have, considering." Phipps swiped a hand over his jaw. He hadn't shaved this morning, not yet at least. She could hear the rasp from across the carriage. "He should be arriving by the three o'clock train into King's Cross."

Lizzy frowned. "Why are you telling me this? I don't usually meet him at the station."

Phipps shifted in his seat. Then he reached into his doublet, and drew out an envelope of heavy paper. It had Victoria's wax seal still warm on the back. "You're to give him this," he said, and Lizzy took it and turned it over. "If that's a problem, I can handle it, but Her Majesty did say that it was to be you."

_Bad news, then_. Victoria did like to package bad news in pretty wrapping. "There's no problem," Lizzy said, and she set the envelope aside before she could get blood on it. "I'll meet him there."

Phipps nodded, and lapsed back into silence for the rest of the journey. He reminded her of Michael in some ways, she thought. Quiet and steady. An odd sort, but not the bad kind. On occasion, she even liked him. Today was not one of those days.

He dropped her at the inn on Fleet Street just as the clocks began to chime seven-thirty. Lizzy had clambered back out of the cab and was about to slink off to the servant's entrance when Phipps leaned forward, out of the window. "Lady Middleford," he said, and when she turned, he nodded at her, once. "Good luck."

Lizzy blinked at him. Before she could say anything, Phipps rapped the top of the carriage, and the cab had trundled away down muddy Fleet Street. The Temple Church bells rang. Lizzy stroked the viper again, and then turned towards the inn, a bath, and Paula.

* * *

><p>Breakfast in the Middleford household was served at seven, sharp, so when Elizabeth wandered into the dining room at the Mayfair house at nearly nine, the only thing left was chilly coffee and even chillier toast. She smeared it with jam anyway, ignoring the look of horror that Dawson (yet another new maid; her mother couldn't keep them on to save her life) sent her, and made herself drink two mugs of coffee before deeming herself presentable, or, at least, awake enough to speak. She'd fallen asleep twice in the bathtub at the Fleet Street rooms; she would have to take a nap once she managed to get Ciel back into his Mayfair household. <em>No rest for the wicked<em>, she thought, and stuck her toast in her mouth so she could open the door to her room again. Her mother would throw a fit if she learned that Lizzy was eating toast at her desk again, but her ear was hurting too much for Lizzy to really care.

"Lizzy!"

It was Edward. His hair was mussed, his shirt was sweat-stained, and he was carrying a sword over his shoulder—premiere evidence of fencing with Mama. Lizzy made a face at him over her toast, and yelped when she bit through it. Edward lunged and caught the thing before it landed jam-side down on the carpet, and made a face. "What on earth are you doing? You weren't at breakfast."

"I was working," she said, and took the toast back from him. The coffee wasn't doing much to help the headache that was building in the back of her skull. Emily tightened around her throat, and then settled again. "I was out late. What are you doing?"

"This and that." His eyes caught on her ear. Bless him, though: he didn't mention it, even if his hands went stiff. "I'm going to assume I'm not supposed to ask."

"Probably not," she said. Lizzy leaned back against the doorjamb. God, but she was so _tired _today. She'd rinsed her mouth out what must have been a thousand times, but she could still taste Raph Harbottle's gin. "Oh—Ciel comes back today."

Edward made a face. "Do you have to tell me that? I _was _hungry a moment ago. Now you've put me off food entirely."

"Oh, don't be so grumpy, Edward, it hasn't been so bad the past year." And in all actuality it hadn't been; even before she'd left for her trip to Calcutta with Paula, Ciel had been keeping his distance. Lizzy lifted a hand to her collar, where the old engagement ring hung in the hollow of her throat. She hadn't taken it off since he'd given it to her the second time. It hadn't parted from her skin once since then.

Ed sighed. "So? When are we to expect his imperialness to grace London with his presence? Don't look at me like that—you know, otherwise you wouldn't have said anything."

"I'm to meet him at King's Cross at three," she told him. "Queen's orders. I have a note to give him."

Edward scowled. "She could have sent someone else."

"If she had," Lizzy said tartly, "she wouldn't be the queen." She took her toast back from him, bussed his cheek (Emily hissed, but did nothing) and then disappeared into her room, snapping the door shut behind her. The note Phipps had given her was lying bold as brass on her desk.

King's Cross Station smelled of garbage and coal and steam. August in London meant light dresses and even lighter petticoats, but the trains all ran on steam, and by the time she'd been there ten minutes she was slick to the skin in sweat. It was a miracle that Emily hadn't just fallen off her to the floor of the platform, she was so soaked. Lizzy fanned her face with one of her trick fans, pretending that she wasn't flushed red as an apple, and glanced over at Paula. She wasn't sure if it was Paula's blood or just her sheer stubbornness, but even in Calcutta, Paula had never seemed to break a single sweat. Her hair curled a little, though. Lizzy wondered if she was a bad mistress for appreciating the fallibility.

"Three minutes, miss," said Paula, catching Lizzy's eye. Lizzy nodded. The clock on the platform was almost fully obscured by the dragon's-breath of a train in from Cambridge, which had just rolled in on the opposite side of the platform. The whole place felt foggy.

"Right." She could only hope the wax seal on Victoria's letter wouldn't melt before then.

Lizzy sighed, and fought off the urge to pace. This wasn't exactly the first time she'd seen Ciel since her return from Bengal. He'd attended a surprising amount of season parties this year. Not only that, but Victoria seemed to delight in shoving the pair of them together when Lizzy least expected it. She still wasn't quite certain what Her Majesty was planning—perhaps a second engagement; it sounded like Victoria's style—but it was, for the most part, unappreciated by both parties. Ciel always looked a little pained, though not, she thought, because he was near her.

At least, she hoped not.

He had kept his word, though. She had told him she needed time—to breathe, to grieve, to grow—and he had stayed away. He hadn't sought her out, not once; there had been no letters, no messages, no ravens in the night. When she'd felt up to it, she'd penned him letters—long ones, full of her own private thoughts, her considerations, her worry. She kept them locked in a drawer in her desk at home.

Her heart clenched in her chest. Lizzy pressed a hand to her ribs, drawing as deep a breath as she dared with her stays laced so tight. Sweat dribbled down the back of her neck into her gown. When she looked up at the clock face, the steam had cleared enough for her to make out the time. _2:59._

Down the platform, a conductor whistled. The air picked up. Lizzy put a hand to her hat as the 3:00 train from Durham snarled its way into King's Cross Station. Paula stepped closer to her, worrying the hems of her gloves.

"Are you all right, Miss Lizzy?"

Lizzy smiled a little, and touched Paula's elbow. "I'm fine. Don't worry, Paula."

Paula pressed her lips together for a moment, but nodded, and fixed Lizzy's hat without further comment.

She hadn't been sure whether or not Ciel would be in first class. If she knew him at all, he _would _be at the far back of the train, luxuriating; but then again, he'd done quite a lot of things for Her Majesty that hadn't involved luxury at all, and she hadn't wanted to destroy his disguise, if he was wearing one. So she stood to the side and waited, watching as the other passengers tromped by her, vanishing like wraiths into the steam. It was, of course, Emily who noticed them first; she squeezed Elizabeth's neck one and then slithered down into her bodice, over her corset, twined down her leg, and onto the floor to greet Snake. The sunlight caught the sheen of Snake's hair like a coin; he ducked his head a little at the sight of her, a smile tugging at his lips, and bowed before standing to the side.

Sebastian was next. Dark, dark, dark—his dried-blood eyes met hers and the corners of his mouth turned up in that Mona Lisa smile. He swept her an elegant bow, ignoring the porter. "My lady," he said. Something twisted in her guts, and she wasn't quite sure if it was fear or regret or worry or all three. Sebastian had called her _my lady _long before she had been knighted, but it meant something different, now. Lizzy inclined her head.

"Sebastian."

"Lizzy," said Ciel, and Lizzy caught her breath. Someone had punched him in the face; there was a cut along the line of his cheekbone, a bruise on his jawline. In spite of everything, he was in full Phantomhive regalia, silks and satins, his father's heavy sapphire on the middle finger of his left hand. She snapped her fan shut, and curtsied.

"My lord Phantomhive," she said, keeping her eyes on the rough stone of the platform. "I trust you're well."

There was a pause. Then Ciel bowed once, sharply.

"Lady Middleford."

Lizzy clenched her fingers tight into her skirts. He'd grown since she'd last seen him. He was taller than her now; only an inch or two, maybe, but he was taller. She wondered if he'd ever imagined he would live long enough to grow that much. Aside from his face, he seemed relatively unharmed, and something wound tight in her chest loosened again. She let out a breath, watching him, and then flushed wildly. "Oh," she said, and scrambled for her bag. _Idiot_. _Twitterpated fool. _"I—I would not have disturbed you, my lord, but I bear a message."

"What happened to your ear?" he blurted, and when she looked up, he had reached out to touch it. He froze, looking at her, his visible eye widening; then he pulled his hand back. "Apologies. I only thought—"

"Someone shot at me this morning," she told him. "That's all."

Ciel stiffened. Beside him, Sebastian went catlike—his head hunched a little deeper into his collar, and his shoulders came up, like a lion readying itself to leap.

"Who?" said Ciel, dangerously.

"None of your business," said Lizzy, and pulled the letter free of her bag. "It was a job, Ciel. We've—we've talked about this," she added, and it _wasn't _desperation she was feeling, it _wasn't_. After everything, was he really—could he actually even think—

"Did you let him live?" Ciel asked, and folded his hands over the top of his cane. "As I recall, you don't particularly like it when people shoot at you."

Lizzy's lips parted. Then she smiled, and turned so it was hidden behind her hair. "Unfortunately, I had run out of bullets."

Ciel huffed a little. "I've told you to keep an extra box with you. Didn't you remember?"

"I _did_, only he _took it_." She offered him the letter. "You'd best read that. It seems important."

He didn't take it. Instead, he just watched her for a time, as if he was searching for something. Finally, he inclined his head once, and he plucked the letter from her outstretched hand. He did not touch her fingers. "I didn't think that Her Majesty would ever send her only female knight on courier duty."

"Her Majesty does as she thinks best." Lizzy curtsied again. "Apologies, my lord, but I ought to let you take your leave. I'm certain you have much to do."

"Lizzy," he said. Lizzy turned. Ciel tucked the letter into his doublet pocket, and licked his lips. He opened his mouth, and closed it again. "I—would you do me the honor of coming to dinner with me? At the end of the week. If you like," he added hastily, and for an instant he was the awkward, gawky boy she remembered, all flushes and wide smiles. "I don't—"

"Yes," she said. Behind Ciel, Sebastian was smiling, almost fondly, at the pair of them. It was like the clock had been turned back, like the Zodiac case had never happened, like they had never boarded the _Campania. _Nostalgia hit her like a fist in the gut. "I—I think we have a lot to talk about."

Ciel nodded. Lizzy hesitated; then she put out her right hand. To shake, she told herself, as Ciel reached forward, and brushed his fingers against hers. It was like touching sparks. Only to shake.

And it was only to shake. It still made her feel agreeably flushed.

"I will send you a note tomorrow, then," he said, and Lizzy nodded.

"That would be best."

They looked at each other for a moment. Then Lizzy snapped her fan open, nodded to Sebastian and to Snake, and turned away, up the platform. Paula clung close to her side, close enough that their skirts nearly tangled. Worry came off her in waves.

Lizzy could feel Ciel's eyes on her back all the way out of the station.

* * *

><p>Much to the chagrin of everyone involved, the season hadn't quite ended. If there was one thing she had never quite understood about her own society, it was why people would insist on dressing up and going to ballrooms packed with people during the hottest times of year. Lizzy fanned her face with her gloved hand, wishing she could escape out one of the French doors onto the balcony. Next to her, Rebecca Beddor, all done up in red with black trim (her period of mourning for her father had been over near a year ago, but she persisted) huffed a breath.<p>

"I-It's v-very noisy," she told Lizzy in a soft voice, creeping a little closer. "I don't think Lord Forsythe is particularly happy w-with Mr. St. John."

"Well," said Lizzy, "Lord Forsythe should learn not to fiddle about with St. John's younger sisters, then."

Rebecca flushed a little, and gave Lizzy a daring smile. She'd grown, Lizzy thought approvingly; she was taller than she'd been, when Lizzy had first come haunting her door to snoop in Damian Beddor's offices. She smiled more. She still wasn't quite daring enough to joke in public, but she had a truly wicked sense of humor that was best suited for whispers, anyway.

"He would," she said, "i-if they stopped throwing themselves at him quite so brazenly."

"Rebecca Beddor, shame on you. You know the poor man can't help himself where pretty young women are concerned. The last ball we both attended, he _pinched _me." Lizzy rubbed her backside in memory. "What's been driving those two girls to fling themselves at him as if he were a lifeline I don't know. They both could do so much better than Lord Jonathan Forsythe."

Rebecca shrugged. She tugged her gloves up her arms again. "I-I heard that the Earl Phantomhive has returned from the north," she said. Lizzy cocked her head.

"Oh?"

"A-And that his return coincided most particularly with the collapse of the Moray Shipping Company centered in Durham."

"Fancy that," said Lizzy, and took another sip of her champagne.

Rebecca sighed. "_Lizzy_."

"Don't look at me, darling. I might know he's back, but I have absolutely no notion what on earth he was doing up north. He never tells me anything, you know that as well as I do. Besides," she added, dragging her forefinger around the rim of her champagne glass. "It's not like I tell him anything, either."

With another sigh, Rebecca hooked her arm through Elizabeth's. "Come on," she said. "I-I need to go home for the night. Womanly vapors. A-and you're the one who brought me here, so you have to leave, too."

"You minx," said Lizzy, and kissed Rebecca on the cheek. "Remind me to throw you a fabulous birthday party."

"I th-think I've had enough of your birthday parties, Lizzy," Rebecca said, and Lizzy threw her head back and laughed.

Lizzy had come in a separate carriage from her parents, so after informing her mother that she would be going home early with a headache, and excusing herself to Mr. St. John, they were in the clear. Lizzy dropped Rebecca at the small town house that Rebecca, her mother, and two of her older brothers had been living in for the past four months or so, and then melted into the seat of the carriage. It was finally starting to cool, she thought, now that the sun had been set for six hours. She left the carriage window open to fan her face, peeled off her gloves, and rubbed her thumb along the smooth metal of the silver-and-sapphire engagement ring, still nestled against her collarbone.

Dinner, she thought. Dinner with Ciel Phantomhive. She supposed that he had taken her seeking him out, even on business, as a sign that she was…settled, again. And indeed, didn't it mean that? She had taken the assignment even when Phipps had offered to go in her place; she had wanted to see Ciel again, needed to, almost, in spite of everything. She had been told once that she was more than a bit mad, and she supposed it was true. If she took that leap, if she let Ciel Phantomhive walk back into her life, then she was going to be hurt for it. There was no alternative.

But if there was one thing she'd worked out for herself, in the year since they'd last truly spoken—in the year since the Director, since Theodore, since the Zodiac—it was that the pain didn't make her love him any less. And if that made her the same as a beggar woman who kept returning to the husband who beat her, well, then she would just grit her teeth and bear it.

Elizabeth pulled her glove back on, and settled herself in.

Paula had left her windows open. Her room was only slightly less sweltering as she peeled off the ball gown and let Paula tug her nightdress firmly over her head. It was nearly three in the morning; she'd been awake for almost thirty-six hours, and her eyes felt like they'd been scooped out and replaced with glass. Lizzy bade Paula good night, and blew out the candle before settling herself on top of the blankets (it was too hot to do anything else). She was nearly asleep when something frightfully cold and wet brushed against her palm.

With a squeal, Lizzy slapped the thing away, and lunged off the bed for a weapon. There was a yowl, and a thump. A cat, she realized. She forced her hands to be still. Just a cat. Lizzy hesitated, and then crawled across the bed again to peer beneath the mattress. A pair of golden eyes glared balefully back.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You startled me." She rubbed her fingers together, the way she'd seen children do out on the street to attract alley cats. "Come out?"

The cat growled. Then, slowly, it leaned forward, and touched its nose to Lizzy's fingertips. It was a thin little thing, Lizzy realized, as she scooped it up in her arms to settle it in her lap. Not skinny, but lithe, with short bluish-gray fur. It was also collared with expensive braided brocade. She scratched under its chin. "Did you wander off, little one? You can't stay here. My brother will start sneezing."

The cat sniffed, loudly, and nudged its head into her palm again. There was a scrap of paper woven into its collar. Lizzy's fingers went still. Her skin prickled, as if someone had just drawn a long-nailed finger up her spine. She tugged the note free. The paper was cheap and cottony, and there was a dark smear of something that smelled like copper on the bottom right-hand corner.

_Defend the key. I leave Ran-Mao in your care._

It wasn't signed. She knew the handwriting. Lizzy closed her hand tight around the paper, and kicked her blankets off. "Paula?" Nothing. Silence. "Paula!"

She heard footsteps. Paula, her hair loose, a shawl hooked around her shoulders, peered into Lizzy's bedroom. "Miss Elizabeth? What—"

"Something's happened to Lau," said Lizzy, and seized the hem of her nightdress, tugging it up over her head in one fluid motion. "I need my shoes, please. And clothes. And my sword."

"Lau?" Paula repeated, fuzzily. Then she focused on the bed. "Miss Lizzy, why do you have a cat? I thought Master Edward was allergic—"

"_Paula_!" She thought of the note again, of the smear of blood. "He's hurt, I think. I have to go_—_"

"Go where? At this time of night? Miss Lizzy—"

Lizzy fought off the urge to shriek. She turned. "Paula. Listen to me. Lau is many things, but most importantly, he's my friend, and I wouldn't be a friend to him if I didn't try to find him." She seized a pair of Edward's trousers and yanked them on. "I need to understand what's going on, and I can't do that from here—I need you to wake Michael and send him to Ciel's, tell him what's happened, if he doesn't already know. I'm going to find Ran-Mao. She'll have some idea of what's happened—"

"You don't have to go looking," said a clipped, accented little voice.

Lizzy seized a knife from beneath her desk and whipped around. There was no one else in the room; no shadow, nowhere for Ran-Mao to hide. She glanced up at the ceiling, but no, nothing there either. Then the cat licked its paw, swiped at its whiskers, and Lizzy saw clearly the flash of the pink tongue, the flicker of teeth, as it said, "I'm already here."

Paula screamed.


End file.
